Handful of Daises
by The Results are Iridescent
Summary: It had been a while since the village of Konoha had been thoroughly embarrassed.
1. Chapter 1

It had been quite some time since the village of Konoha had been thoroughly embarrassed. It had also been quite some time since had been bewildered as it was now.

After all, how often does an internationally wanted criminal appear right in front of the Hokage and her apprentice with another internationally wanted criminal slung over one shoulder and a bouquet of flowers in his hand? Not very often, a Konoha shinobi _might_ admit. The chances are near impossible, even by ninja standards.

But yet, here Deidara was, with Uchiha Sasuke slung over his shoulder and a bunch of freshly picked daisies in his hand. The breach of security wasn't the end of embarrassment for the village though.

It took Tsunade and her apprentice, Haruno Sakura, a full five seconds to recover from the initial shock of the situation. For them, this shock was comparable to the shock a starving man might have if suddenly he was presented with a steak from a five star restaurant. After recovering from shock, it took the two kunoichi two seconds to summon help from the elite ANBU guards positioned around the Hokage tower.

The same shock overtook the ANBU squad. It took them a fourth of second to recover from the shock of seeing their targets that had long evaded them standing in front of them. It took them another fourth of a second to evaluate the situation and determine that, well, Deidara was doing nothing except standing there and smiling like a fucking idiot. It then took the ANBU two and a half seconds to neutralize and secure the threat. It took that long because two ANBU smacked head on in tackling the grinning shinobi in front of them. Their squad leader stepped over them in irritation and roughly turned Deidara around and bound his hands in a way that he couldn't make any hand signs, and pushed him to the ground. He then pushed Sasuke and bound him as well. The rest of the ANBU squad stood behind him, either grimacing behind their masks at their team mates' idiotic moves, or in anticipation of the total ass chewing they were sure to receive later. The two that had smacked into each other were praying that they wouldn't be demoted down into chunins again. All the while, Deidara was still grinning like a mad man.

He had reason to. The average time it took to respond to an emergency and secure it was about three seconds. However, he had caused a situation that had taken ten seconds total to secure. A squad of ANBU had been slaughtered in less time by Deidara himself. All and all, it was one huge embarrassment for the village.

The ANBU guards silently hauled off the smug shinobi and his unconscious companion to their high security head quarters. On the way out, the squad leader kicked the two operatives responsible for the time lag. They knew that they were in for it when they got to the head quarters.

Tsunade and Sakura were left behind. Both let out a breath that they had been holding. Sakura leaned back on her shishou's desk and clutched her heart, which was beating wildly. Not only she had been in the presence of two very powerful shinobi who could have killed her in an instant with her guard let down, but she had seen Sasuke…the very bastard she had been chasing for years to bring back to the village. She shook her head in disbelief. She knew that what had just happened was real, but she was having trouble believing it. Sakura ran a hand through her hair. This was hurting her brain.

"Sakura?" The kunoichi looked behind her. Tsunade was sitting in her usual chair, but she was leaned forward and was cradling her head in her head. Her mouth was set into a thin, tight line.

"Yes, Shishou?"

"You are not to speak of what just happened her to anyone one. Not to Kakashi. Not to Shizune. Especially not to Naruto. I don't want him tearing through the ANBU headquarters to find that Uchiha bastard. Is that understood?"

"Yes, Tsunade-shishou."

"Now, go. I want you to take the rest of the day off. You're probably still in shock from seeing those two, and I don't want it to affect your work. We don't need another incompetent medic at the hospital. There's enough over there to fill the five nations to the brim. Before you head home, I want you to walk Tonton to the hospital and hand her off to Shizune. She's been hanging around here too much lately, and she's getting an attitude. Maybe walking her might take an edge off of her attitude. You may go." Tonton oinked in protest. Frankly, she liked hanging around the Hokage office. She was getting used to doing nothing and living the lap of luxury.

"Thank you." Sakura gave her a quick bow and scooted the lazy pig out of the door with her foot. Tsunade waited until her student and the grumbling pig were well down the hallway, and then stomped the floor. It opened up, revealing a bottle of fine sake she had been hording for months. She checked to make sure no one was around, and carefully took out the bottle and examined it. Tsunade always had a keen sense of when work was about to arrive, and she had quite the hunch that this incident was going to spark quite a lot of paper work on her part. She opened up the bottle of sake and took a sip. Today was going to be a very long day.

**AN:** Hey guys. It's been quite a while. Two years? Two and a half? Hell, what does it matter.

I might be back.

Opportunist will not. Maroon will not.

Quite frankly, I'm disappointed in the fandom and _Naruto_ itself lately. So, allow me to introduce a little bit of that old stuff that we all miss back into the fandom.

Enjoy. I might post more, depending on my mood.


	2. Chapter 2

"I'm sorry, ma'am, but any outside personal are forbidden to enter the area beyond this point at the current time." Sakura huffed in annoyance at the ANBU guard in front of her. He or she seemed not to be too perturbed by her foul mood. She had meant to come and check on the Uchiha bastard (purely medical curiosity, she assured Tsunade), but it seemed that the ANBU were freaked out at the prospect of having an Uchiha in their compound, and had the entire west wing shut down.

"You might as well head home, unless you have any other visits to make, ma'am." Sakura sighed again, and turned on her heel to head down the dark hallway. Various murmurs filtered out of the cells as she walked past them. This was one of the few places that a ninja could their guard down, as strange as it was. The cells were reinforced to the maximum, and were specially designed to drain the prisoners of almost all of their chakra. Between each of the cells, there were seals that responded to break outs and summoned a gamut of things: weapons, familiars, and even ninja. Sakura drifted to one side of the hall and let her fingers ghost over the wall where the seal to summon her team and several other teams lay imbedded. She hoped she would never be summoned here. Who knew what she might be in the middle of when the call came. Sighing, she looked up, and was startled into jumping back several feet. A bloody hand holding an apple stuck out the small barred window in the cell door in front of her. Inside of the cell, someone coughed.

"Hey, a little help here, kunoichi? They gave me this apple, but they didn't give me a knife to cut it with. Surely you could cut it with those handy kunai you have there on your hip?" Sakura narrowed her eyes. The voice belonged to none other than Deidara. His strange speech quirk was still there, with a quiet 'hmm' punctuating every few sentences. There was no way in hell that she was going to help him, even if he did bring the Uchiha bastard back. Determined, she walked by the cell, ignoring him. Just as she passed the window, she heard a sigh.

"Look, I wouldn't bother asking, but I really like apples, and they knocked a few of my teeth out yesterday. Their medic did a shitty job putting them back in. So, please…help me out?" Sakura paused. Deidara sounded genuinely desperate…and if the medics did a bad job, someone was going to hear about it. There were certain conduct orders that medics had to follow when treating prisoners in between 'sessions', and one of the conduct orders made sure that prisoners were healed to the extent that they were able to eat. She turned around. The hand was still sticking out of the window. It was now shaking a bit with the effort it took to hold the apple. Someone was going to get it. If he couldn't even hold food for an extended period of time, then someone was not doing their job.

"Give me that. I want to take a look at those teeth." When she snatched the apple away from him, she saw that the mouths on the palms of his hands were sewed shut, and not well. They were weeping unidentifiable liquids, as well as blood. Sakura's mouth curved down. She was not happy.

"Lean forward and open your mouth." Deidara's face came into view. She took out her keys and used the small light that she had on it to examine his mouth. True to his word, the medics had only done a very rudimentary job with putting the teeth back into his mouth. She sighed and flicked off the light. Deidara studied her through the bars as she splashed the bloody apple with water from a small bottle she kept hooked to her side. Looking both ways, she drew a kunai and quickly sliced the apple into several pieces. His hand came back through the bars and she handed him the slices.

"Look, I'll get you some proper medical treatment, even if it's myself giving it." His face appeared up against the bars. She could see blood smeared across his face, and a few pink tracks down his face marked where involuntary tears had fallen during the interrogation.

"Why?"

"Why? It's not you personally, trust me. I hate you for making my life hell, and my friends' lives hell. But frankly, we have rules here about how people are treated. I suppose you don't even know the definition of rules, living how you have." He indignantly huffed, obviously offended. She smirked. It was an easy, cheap victory, but she'd take it. This man infuriated her with every movement he made and every breath he took. The small victory eased off the impending blow up from being in his presence. She turned to walk away, and could feel his eyes following her.

"Thanks, I guess."

"Don't get used to it."

* * *

"Tsunade-shishou, something has to be done about this situation! The condition of the prisoners is absolutely horrendous! The compound medics have not been doing their job!"

"Sakura, is this about the Uchiha again?" Tsunade looked at her angry student, obviously doubtful about her intentions. Sakura smashed her hand down on the desk, slightly cracking it.

"Shishou, let's put it this way. I stopped by a cell today, and the man inside had infected wounds and could not eat. This is in clear violation of the contracts that those medics abide under." Tsunade sighed.

"Even if that's true, Sakura, I can't do anything about it. There's a shortage of medics as it is. I can't appoint new medics. It's obvious that the medics there have a bias towards the prisoners, and I can't exactly blame them. The things that some of those prisoners have done have probably affected them in some way or another."

"Shishou, do we have a current warden over those medics?" Tsunade groaned.

"Sakura, I already told you, we don't-."

"Do we have a warden?" Sakura glared at her shishou. She was not letting the older woman getting out of answering this.

"No." Tsunade opted for watching a nest of blue birds outside of her window instead of meeting her student's eyes.

"Well then. I'll start tomorrow." Tsunade swung her chair around and gaped at her student.

"What? Sakura, no! I can't lose you at the hospital! It's absolutely critical that you remain there!"

"They handled just fine without me before. Besides, there are some good nurses that are positioned there that just sit around on their asses and gossip all day. They can pick up the slack." Tsunade sighed. Her student had set her mind on doing this, and there was no way that anyone could change her mind at this point.

"Fine, Sakura. Reform the entire medic system we have set up at the ANBU compound. Do you need anything to help you get started?"

"Well, I'll send you an inventory list tomorrow, and there's one little thing I need to have the power to do."

"What's that?" Sakura smiled like someone had given her a handful of daises on Valentine's Day.

"Oh, just the power to demote people down to genin status if they dare cross me."

* * *

Well well. Two whole reviews. I love you guys that reviewed. I'm glad to see that you still enjoy my writing.

But for the rest of you, review! I can see how many people have hit the story now, and I want to know where all my reviews are. =

Anyway, I'm flying by the seat of my pants here. I have no idea where I'm going, but I know something that's going to appear in every chapter. Have you guys found it yet?


	3. Chapter 3

Life certainly was not a handful of daises for the compound medics that week. Sakura whirled through the place like a hurricane and gave the medics two options: obey or get demoted back down to genin status. The first day she came in, three sassy medics did not believe her. By the end of the first hour, they were genin again and working at the hospital. The other medics grumbled about the changes, as did the ANBU, but they did not dare voice any complaints in front of Sakura.

Sakura started her reform with the first half of the West wing, where she had first seen signs of medical misconduct with Deidara. The criminals here were extremely dangerous(although not as dangerous as those kept in the second half of the wing), so she pulled in a few ANBU operatives that could be considered bruisers to help her handle the 'patients'. Only a few gave her trouble though. Most had the spirit and will to escape beaten out of them. They filed into the medical offices one by one, cell by cell, with their hopeless eyes staring at the medics. Sakura was appalled to see that some of the prisoners had various sores covering their bodies. Other had various infected cuts from interrogation and torture sessions.

Not all had lost their fighting spirit however. A man came in the first day that gave the medics and ANBU quite some trouble. The man's entire body was scaly like a green crocodile from the Mist, and he had a mouth of teeth to match his exterior. He thrashed and fought them, and it took four elite ANBU to hold him down. He bit several of the nurses and poisoned them. Needles splintered when they came in contact with his skin when the nurses tried to sedate him through anesthesia. Sakura had forbidden the guards to knock any of the prisoners out unless performing genjutsu was impossible. Sakura was called in to put an advanced genjutsu on the strange man. The man eyed her hungrily with his yellow reptilian eyes as she preformed the hand signs.

As his eyes slid shut, she had the nagging feeling that it wasn't sexual hunger that he had eyed her with. No, it had been more a primal, animalistic hunger. Sakura left the medics to do their work and perform the check up. She was very disturbed the entire thing. Questions swarmed through her mind. Was this man some failed experiment? Was he even from this village? She could probably find out, but then again, maybe she didn't want to know. Sakura preferred to remain oblivious to horrors as long as they didn't directly affect her. She moved her mind away from the subject and instead thought of an incident that had happened earlier that day. One of her nurses that had come with her from the hospital, Naoko, had stopped her in the hallway.

"Sakura, what's the point of this all?" Naoko was usually very shy, but now she looked her superior straight in the eyes.

"What do you mean?" Sakura knew exactly what she meant, but she wanted to know if Naoko was truly challenging her judgment. Naoko ripped her yes away from Sakura's eyes and stared at her feet. Her face was bright red with shame.

"Treating the prisoners. Making sure that they're in good health. What's the point? They're either evil, insane, or both! They're the scourge of humanity! We shouldn't even-."

"We should bother. If you'll remember the small contract we both signed and the oath we both took when we first started this profession, you'll remember that we're bound to help those in need, especially when ordered to. I will not have any of the medics here neglect their duties. I'll admit it. I loath these people. I hate them. I despise them for all the disgusting things they've done against humanity. But they I have to hate myself, because I do the same. I practice the same damn creed: I kill, sneak, lie, and steal when ordered to. You do too. But you see, Naoko, the one straw, the one thin line that sets us apart from these ninja is that we don't enjoy it. We are medics for a reason other than helping people. It's our penance for the horrendous sins we've committed as ninja." Sakura's hiss rebounded down the dark hall, sometimes ricocheting off the walls, sometimes creeping into the small cell windows.

Naoko stared at Sakura, obviously in shock from what the senior kunoichi had said to her. Naoko was a couple of years older than Sakura, but she was only a chunin. Sakura knew from looking at Naoko's record that she had never killed someone. The thought had never occurred to her that her job was much like a criminal's work. Sakura sighed.

"Well, now that we've cleared that up, it's time for both of us to get back to work. I hope that was enlightening."

"Yes, ma'am. It was."

"Good. Now shoo."

* * *

It amazed Sakura that the medics were able to get through the first half of the west wing in one day. The last patient was about to be escorted in, and she was cleaning up after the last one, who had some particularly nasty infections that wept on the examining table. She had repeated the spiel that she had given Naoko several times throughout the day, and the compound medics were finally starting to get that it wasn't about whether or not these people had affected them, but rather about their job and whether or not they got to keep it.

Sakura had been anticipating this last patient. She wasn't exactly sure what he'd say or how he'd react to the entire reform of the compound, but she was going to thank him. She dug in her bag and produced an apple, which she sliced up into several pieces. She dumped several pieces into a bowl and placed it beside the examining table. She discovered that most people, even ninjas, could be trained through a reward system. While she hated treating people like dogs, Sakura knew that if she made this patient's pain a little less, then maybe he'd cooperate a bit more with giving them information. From what she had heard from Ibiki, he had been mostly cooperative, but very resistant when the interrogation swung around to his own past and the inner workings of his former village. That's where the beatings began.

Sakura heard the door creak open, and looked up. Deidara was shoved in roughly by his two escorts. Sakura glared at them, and they stood at attention. Deidara, on the other hand, knelt on the floor, clutching his chest and coughing. Sakura knelt down beside him, her hands already glowing green with chakra. She carefully pried his hands away and let her chakra flow through his chest. She let her eyes follow the chakra's path through his body. She could see a broken rib that was beginning to pierce his lung. Apparently the guards had been roughing him up before he had arrived. Her eyes shot up to the guards and her lip curled.

"Get the fuck out of my sight. Your superiors will be hearing about this."

"But, ma'am, the prisoner-."

"I can handle him. Obviously you can't, even when he's being cooperative. Now get out." The ANBU guards scampered out of the room, afraid of the kunoichi's legendary wrath. Sakura carefully nudged Deidara's rib back into place and put temporary chakra bonds on it.

"Come on. Let's get you on the examining table." She helped Deidara get up and onto the examining table. Sakura noted that he had a new layer of blood on his face and turned around to get a few alcohol wipes to clean it off.

"So, you remembered that I liked apples, huh?" She peered over her shoulder. He was eying the bowl of apple slices with great curiosity. He tried reaching for a slice, but she stopped him and turned his hand over. It still was oozing pus and blood. Sighing, she took an alcohol wipe and began to clean off his hand. She placed an apple slice in it when she was done. He carefully ate it as she cleaned his other hand.

"So why won't you tell them about yourself in the interrogation room?" Deidara stiffened slightly. He had finished the apple slice and his hand was slowly inching towards the bowl again. Sakura pushed the bowl away and looked him straight in the eyes.

"Well?" He looked away and huffed. She opened up a few new packages of the wipes and started to work on cleaning the layers of blood off of his face.

"I just don't think they need to know that much about me. I'll tell them anything about the Akatsuki, but they insist on asking me about my personal stuff." He flinched as she ran a wipe over a cut near his mouth.

"Is there maybe something you're trying to protect?" Again, his body went slightly rigid. She wondered idly how he ever could tell a lie if his body was such a dead give away to when he was uncomfortable about something.

"No." His answer was short and clipped.

"I think that's a lie. You're not a very good liar." He ignored her in favor of staring at the apple bowl. He sighed.

"Before the Akatsuki began to roam and had no set base, we had a base up near my old hometown. In the autumn, there was an orchard outside that would give the biggest, reddest apples I'd ever seen." Well, now this was going somewhere.

"What's the name of your hometown?" He snorted.

"It had no name. It was such a small town that the Earth country and its inhabitants didn't even bother naming it."

"Do you still have any family there?"

"No." Her eyebrows furrowed. He answered a bit too quickly. Another lie. This was important though. It meant that there could be others with his kekkei genkai. Sakura finished cleaning up his wounds, and set to work on healing them. She fixed a few of the nerves in his mouth that the medics had screwed up, and sealed up the cuts around his mouth. Her hands wandered back down to his broken rib and worked on mending it and the wounded spot in his lungs. Meanwhile, he had managed to snag the bowl of apples and was happily munching his way through them. After he was done, she looked at his hands again. They seemed pretty bad, but she couldn't really do anything for them at the moment. Her chakra was so low that she was afraid that she'd pass out. Luckily, someone knocked on the door. She opened it to find a new duo of ANBU awaiting her.

"The ANBU captains apologize for the misconduct. Are you finished with the examination, Haruno?"

"Yes. He'll need to come back tomorrow. I'm afraid I can't do anything for his hands at this point. My chakra's pretty much hit rock bottom." The operatives nodded, and walked into the room. Deidara was already standing with his hands out to his sides. The operatives twisted his arms behind his back and escorted him out of the room. As soon as the door had shut, Sakura leaned back on the table and sighed.

He'd piqued her interest with the lies that he had told. It was plainly obvious that he was trying to protect something or someone in that village up in the Earth country. It confused her though. Why did he give away such a blatant clue to her? The man made no sense at all. Sakura sighed again, and picked up all the wipes that she had used and threw them into the bin near the door. She never knew that this would be so interesting. She just wanted to do it originally because of the medical misconduct. But now, it was because of Deidara.

* * *

**A/N:** This is the longest chapter I've ever written. Whoo-hoo.

Thank you to my muse, who read through this tonight, even though I was very…um…resistant about it.

Thank you to my reviewers. I have to warn you guys though. This isn't going to be a cutesy story like the last ones. I'm warning you now.


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